Insult to Injury: How Agencies Ignore the Rights of Youth Who Age out of Foster Care

Youth who age out of foster care have experienced a double marginalization that can best be described as a violation of their human rights. Each year, 20,000 youth exit foster care without a forever family—marking the concluding failing point of government agencies that continue America’s centuries-old practice of separating families in the name of “child protection.” The risk of aging out of foster care is disproportionately higher for certain groups of youth. Youth who are Black (26 percent) or Indigenous (2 percent) make up a disproportionate share of the population of the young people who age out every year. Approximately half of the youth who age out of foster care have disabilities. These inequities continue America’s sordid history of regulating the families of people who are poor, Black, Indigenous, or disabled through chattel slavery, orphan trains, Indian Boarding Schools, and more recently, policies like the Assistance to Families of Dependent Children linked to federal foster care financing. Relegating youth to complete their maturation without the asset of deep familial or cultural connections begets a series of poor outcomes for youth who age out of foster care.

The government agencies responsible for children in foster care typically try to avoid aging kids out of foster care because this damning resolution demonstrates their failure to achieve permanency and stability for the children and youth in their care. Upon removing a child and placing them into foster care, child and family agencies are entrusted with the responsibility of securing permanent care for these children by reunifying them with their families, orchestrating a permanent legal guardianship or custody arrangement with a family member or friend, or facilitating the child’s adoption by a family member or caregiver. Once the court orders one of these dispositions, the child’s foster care case is closed and the adults who are party to the case are expected to act according to the best interests of the child and to help them transition into young adulthood. On the contrary, children who “age out” of foster care have their court cases closed because they have reached the upper age limit for court jurisdiction, which is age 18 or 21, depending on the state’s laws. Furthermore, the parents of youth who are aging out of foster care typically have had their parental rights terminated. As a result, youth who age out of foster care are forced to forage their own path to adulthood, with only their “do-it-yourself” support network to catch them if they fall.

By the time youth age out of foster care, many (if not most) have already been failed repeatedly by the government agencies that are supposed to help them find healing, stability, and safety. Nearly all of the youth who age out of foster care have been a ward of the state for at least three years before they are thrust into the grown-up world as legal orphans on their 18th or 21st birthdays. Prior to aging out of foster care, these young people were forced to change foster homes many times, and it is not uncommon to hear youth who age out of foster care report that they have lost count of the number of caseworkers they had. As youths are passed to the next foster home or case worker, their physical and developmental needs are often ignored or preyed on. We know youth whose needs for reproductive health education and services were ignored, while they were simultaneously subjected to excessive fillings and unnecessary psychiatric medications. These youth report feeling exploited and are distrustful of medical professionals because they feel like the professional took advantage of their vulnerability in order to obtain profit in the form of government reimbursements for services rendered. This institutional neglect creates distrust of the foster parents, case workers, and the “helping” systems, and this distrust does not disappear after youth age out of foster care. Unable to trust the systems that failed them, many youth who are aging out of foster care have been set up to fail at the unforgiving task of becoming self-reliant young adults without a robust support system. 

The lack of attention, services, and care that older youth experience while they are aging out of foster care breeds lasting adversity in their adult lives. The federal John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (also known as the Chafee Program) allows state and county agencies to access funding to support programs and services to eligible youth who are transitioning to adulthood. Over 30 states and localities have opted to provide room and board payments to young people up to age 23. Education and Training Vouchers are available to youth until age 26. However, experts estimate that over the course of a year, just 25 percent of eligible youth access one or more Chafee service. The services are not reaching enough of the youth who are aging out of care, and the outcomes clearly show that youth who have aged out of care are not positioned to thrive as young adults. Consequently, many youths who have aged out of foster care struggle across a number of life’s domains, such as their cultural identity, development, economic stability, physical and mental health, and education. 

In almost any other country, the poor outcomes experienced by youth who age out of foster care would necessitate a human rights investigation and perhaps a children’s rights investigation as well. However, because the United States has not bound itself to any internationally enforceable statement of human rights, such as the American Convention on Human Rights or the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), foster care agencies’ treatment of transitioning youth goes underexamined and under critiqued. 

The UNCRC would require foster care agencies to help youth who are aging out of foster care heal, thrive, and obtain emotional stability by providing them access to mental health support and trauma-informed care. The reality is that youth who have aged out of foster care are two to four times more likely to have mental health disorders than their peers in the general population. Youth who are aging out often start the process of leaving foster care with compromised mental health status due to trauma from adverse childhood experiences, neglect, or separation from families. The weeks and months leading up to youth aging out are frequently full of meetings and emails that fuel anxiety, trigger traumatic memories, and deeply damage young people’s mental health. It’s hard to keep going to therapy or to use positive coping skills when you are worried about where you will sleep on the night of your 21st birthday. Unsurprisingly, many youth who age out of foster care struggle with anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Agencies and institutions must stop often offering superficial or temporary measures to address the challenges faced by youth and instead provide comprehensive resources and educational opportunities to support their development into healthy, self-sufficient young adults as they exit child welfare.

Ensuring access to consistent and quality education is crucial to children’s development and future opportunities. Under the international standards of the UNCRC, foster children and their peers have the right to free and compulsory primary education and access to secondary and higher education. However, children in the welfare system frequently experience disruptions in their education due to placement changes, homelessness, or instability. Additionally, many burned-out caseworkers fail to prioritize educational stability and don’t seek out support services to mitigate the impacts of instability on academic achievement. The instability and the lack of financial and emotional support results in only about half of the children who grew up in foster care graduating from high school, and fewer than 10 percent of former foster youth earn an associate or bachelor’s degree. Agencies’ systemic failures to sufficiently support their wards’ academic success lead to many young adults aging out of foster care with elevated risks of experiencing poverty, homelessness, and other social challenges as they exit care without the resources necessary for success. 

Youth who age out of foster care have been forced to navigate transition after transition while moving in a system that does not always center their unique needs, dreams, beliefs, and circumstances. Many youth rely on their cultural and religious backgrounds to fuel them for this journey, and the UNCRC would require agencies to respect youths’ cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds and protect them from discrimination based on any identity. In the child welfare system, respecting cultural and religious rights is essential, particularly for Indigenous and Black youth. Sadly, agencies do not consistently respect cultural and religious rights, which often leads to disconnection from a youth’s heritage and a lack of cultural continuity. Programs within child welfare should include cultural education, access to cultural support, and connections with community members so that fewer youth experience stressful identity crises shortly after leaving foster care. 

Government agencies have long used family separation, instead of concrete economic support, as a shield to protect children from the risks that are associated with poverty. Unfortunately, these same agencies do not help most youth who are aging out of foster care break the generational poverty. Because over two-thirds of child removals are prompted by allegations of neglect, which can include situations stemming from poverty or inadequate housing, many former foster youths’ children are at an increased risk of coming into foster care. Former foster youth who are parents have experienced surveillance, investigations, and threats to remove their newborns from their care. Some youth who have aged out of foster care have said, “It’s like child trafficking” and “Every child is a head count, and it’s about the state getting money instead of supporting the wellbeing of families.” 

While the UNCRC would direct governments to provide economic support for children, until very recently, over half of the state child and family services agencies were taking (often improperly) Social Security benefits from children in foster care to cover part of the costs of their foster care. With nearly one-third of youth who age out experiencing homelessness by the time they are 23 years old, the government’s wrongful enrichment and exploitation contributes to the generational cycles of poverty and child welfare system involvement that many youths who age out of foster care experience.

The marginalization of youth who age out of foster care is tragic, unjust, and heartbreaking. But we assure you that those who age out of foster care do not need pity. They need us to learn from their experiences and amplify their demands for change. They need us to use whatever means we have available to hold agencies accountable for supporting their development and respecting their human rights.